EMC is far from a perfect company.
But one thing I really like about this place is that when we set our mind to doing something, it takes a while, but we end up nailing it sooner or later.
Today's example is that elusive quality known as "ease of use".
And I think we're starting to get it.
The Problem With Ease of Use
Back many years ago, I was running a portion of product marketing for EMC. We'd do these customer councils, focus groups, etc. to figure out what customers wanted.
We'd been making macro investments in making storage management a bit easier. We were working on getting ControlCenter better, and we thought high-level management was what customers needed.
But underneath these frameworks, there's still the need to manage the stuff directly. Boring things like installation, configuration, quick checks, and so on.
And this whole "ease of use" thing started to come up with increasing frequency from our bigger customers.
Now, at the time, we sold really big boxes to really big IT shops, so we hadn't really thought much about that. Sure, an entry-level product had to be easy to use, but big IT stuff? No way!
The thinking was that there was an inherent conflict between rich, powerful and functional products -- and products that were inherently simple to use. You couldn't have both, many thought.
Au contraire, our customers said. We don't have the IT staff we used to have, and we're asking them to do far more. We can't afford to make them expert on your products, and we can't afford to have them making mistakes.
Because your products aren't easy to use, they're inherently more expensive, they told us.
It was a sobering moment. If there's anything we know how to do well, listening to customers is one of them. We took this very, very seriously.
And as we thought about this more, we realized that as storage capacities exploded, and media costs dropped, management effort would end up being a dominant factor in customer evaluations.
Now, when me -- the product marketing guy -- took this back to our engineering folks, we got a predictable initial response.
"Our products are very easy to use".
This was from the engineers that spend all day, every day working on them. Of course they'd say that.
But the lead exec of the group (Dave Donatelli) took up the mantra, and incessantly encouraged the EMC engineering organizations to start thinking -- really thinking -- about ease of use.
Not in a shallow, wallpaper kind of way -- but in a deep and fundamental way.
And the results are really starting to pay off for all customers -- large and small.
Example 1 -- EMC Celerra NS20
I think it's fair to say that EMC's Celerra -- despite its market success -- was never really seen as an "easy to use" product.
Yes, it scaled, and it performed, and it had all this wonderful configurable functionality, but one customer likened it to the control panel of a 747 -- nice buttons, but he was scared to push any of them, especially while in flight.
It's been getting incrementally better and better over the last few releases. New wizards, new interfaces, etc.
But when EMC brought out the new NS20, I think we took a big leap forward.
Everything preconfigured. Power to production in 15 minutes. Nice placemat to show you how it all goes together.
Even the folks at CRN were pretty impressed -- check here.
If you've had a past experience with the Celerra, go take a look. It won't look the same to you.
Example 2 -- Symmetrix Management Console
Sometimes big things don't get noticed. If you're a Symmetrix user, SMC is very cool. A simple, logical (and bulletproof) way to discover and configure your DMX -- no heavy-duty plumbing involved.
Even high-end storage users need ease-of-use. Their life is busy as well.
Sorry, hex code fans, it's all nice and graphical now. But if you ask us real nice, we'll show you where the TTY interface is ...
Example 3 -- New CLARiiON FLARE code
We just announced version 26 of FLARE (the microcode in a CLARiiON) and in addition to neat things like RAID 6, one of the features was "70% fewer clicks for common management tasks".
I think it's interesting that we now are seeing a form of quantitative measurement (e.g. clicks to accomplish) that attempt to measure ease of use. More work to do, but it's interesting -- and promising.
The newer form of quantitative measure will probably be "time to complete a common management task". Some things only take a few clilcks to set up, but end up running a l-o-o-o-o-ng time. EMC is focused on that as well.
And There's More
We're seeing redesigned management interfaces everywhere. Products preconfigured for immediate installation. Wizards that streamline common tasks. Defaults set up for the most common use cases.
Across the board, EMC is starting to figure out this "ease of use" thing at least at a product level.
What This Means
We get into all sorts of vigorous competitive situations in the storage marketplace. It's one of the more -- ahem -- aggressive parts of the IT landscape.
EMC, being the market leader, is not usually painted in a warm, glowing light by our competitors.
They call us the Evil Machine Company. That our stuff is too expensive. And it's way too complicated for mere mortals to use.
Well, smart customers know that it's a competitive market, and our prices have to be in line with other alternatives on the market. Nobody can charge an unjustified premium these days in the storage biz.
And what they're finding out is that -- thanks to EMC's efforts -- our newer products are becoming far easier to install, configure and run in a simple day-to-day environment.
If you haven't seen the new stuff in a while, take a look. Hopefully, you'll be as impressed as I am.
So what are the other guys going to complain about now?
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